1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an improvement in a disk mower which includes a housing, at least two adjoining disks rotatably mounted in the housing, each provided with at least one cutter, an entrainment mechanism for the disks, and a soil removal device located in the front portion of the housing.
2. Description of the Prior Art
A disk mower suffers from the disadvantage that in damp land, or when the earth is relatively moist and sticky, there occur at the front portion of the housing of the mower and especially in locations between two neighboring disks, accumulations composed of a mixture of earth and fine stalks and the like of the cut vegetation. When these accumulations extend towards the front beyond the point of intersection of the outer trajectories of the cutting tools of the mower, the cutting tools can no longer cut the vegetation, which then accumulates in these locations, so that there remain in the field trails of uncut vegetation which, when plentiful, consequently represent a loss of that vegetation, or its end product, namely fodder. In order to reduce these losses, and to avoid a total clogging of the cutter bar of the mower, such accumulations must frequently be removed, which slows down the cutting of the vegetation considerably.
Furthermore, the trails of uncut vegetation create problems during subsequent operations. In fact, during tedding, any cut hay which remains in the vicinity of the trails of uncut vegetation cannot be properly turned over by the tedding machine, so that it will still be wet when being collected, which is detrimental for its proper conservation and storage.
Furthermore, during swathing, part of the dry hay raked by the swathing machine will remain clinging to the non-cut stalks. A similar phenomenon will occur during the collection of the swath of vegetation by the collecting machine if said swath of vegetation lies on any uncut trail, because the collector portion of the collecting machine will not be able to gather the entire cut vegetation, so that the volume of effective loss of vegetation will be greater still.
Moreover, at a subsequent cutting operation or second harvest, the previously uncut vegetation or old hay will be found to be already partly spoiled and mixed with the new vegetation, which has regrown again at those locations, which had been properly cut during the previous cutting operation. This in turn diminishes substantially the quality of the second harvest.
There is known a mower provided with disks which includes at the front part of the housing between two neighboring disks scrapers which scrape away any earth clinging to the cutters. For this purpose, these scrapers are provided with an inclined plane sloping towards the ground along which the earth removed from the cutters must glide downwardly without adhering to the inclined plane. In practice it has however become clear that although such scrapers reduce any earth accumulations slightly, they cannot prevent them altogether.